... but rats, Lib MP really did call Howard a rodent

Liberal Senator George Brandis does not deny routinely referring to the Prime Minister as "the rodent".

He does, however, deny ever calling the Prime Minister "a lying rodent". He believes John Howard is a truthful rodent.

Actually, we should clarify that further, for Brandis is a barrister, with a barrister's capacity for fine distinction. He would only ever call Howard the rodent; never a rodent, because the former is a nickname, whereas the latter would be a pejorative term.

Advertisement

And, it must be said, in all the times this correspondent has heard Brandis use the r-word it has always been preceded by "the", not "a".

You may laugh, but it's a valid, if somewhat legalistic, point. And a very important one, given the legal stoush now consuming the Liberal Party. According to a statutory declaration signed three days ago by a former senior official in the Queensland division of the party, Russell Galt, Brandis "unambiguously referred" to the PM as "a lying rodent", in relation to the children overboard affair at a meeting in May last year.

That's pretty serious, given that the PM's integrity has been challenged over the matter, and that barrister Brandis has led the defence of Howard in the Senate inquiry into the issue.

Galt swore that "while referring to . . . hearings of this committee, Senator Brandis made the following two remarks: "He is a lying rodent" and "we've got to go off and cover his arse again on this".

Well, Brandis immediately responded with his own stat dec, denying having made any such statement, and swearing he believed the PM's account of the events to be "truthful and honest".

But please note, his declaration makes no mention of the r-word. Of course not. Any number of people around Parliament House will attest that Brandis uses the nickname frequently and openly.

George Brandis does not much like John Howard, and, judging by the efforts of the Howard faction to undermine Brandis in the past, the feeling is reciprocated. Yet ironically the two men were forced into reciprocal endorsements of one another's integrity yesterday, as journalists asked gleefully loaded questions like: "Prime Minister, do you back George Brandis when he said he never called you a lying rodent?"

Howard: "Well, George Brandis has, on oath, denied those allegations and George Brandis is to be believed."

But remember, George Brandis calls Howard "the rodent". He privately says a lot of people in the Government regularly refer to Howard in the same way. Indeed, the PM has been descriptively tagged as the rodent almost as long as he's been ironically tagged as Honest John. The nickname dates from the long internecine war between Howard and Andrew Peacock some 15 years ago.

It began as a reference to the way Howard ceaselessly gnawed at Peacock's leadership, and was adopted by John Hewson supporters for much the same reason. And it lives on among Costello supporters, although it's a fair bet it will be used more discreetly in future.